PREFACE OF TRANSLATOR.
CARDINAL NEWMAN, when speaking in the Birmingham Oratory last January, on the occasion of the Papal Jubilee, said: "The Holy Father lived a long life before he became Pope, and little was known of him, yet he has now in the few years that he has become Pope done things which it may be said no other man could do. I scarcely sup pose that any of you here present had heard his name before he was made Pope. There did not seem any likelihood that he would ever leave Perugia, his bishopric, but he was found — as others have been found — by a special providence and inspiration of God, and we in our ignorance knew nothing of him."
This golden treatise on The Practice of Humility, from the pen of the reigning Sovereign Pontiff, now presented to the English public, comes then as a revelation, and lifts the veil which hitherto has concealed from view the long years of his comparative seclusion spent in Perugia. It shows us the work divine grace was achieving in his heart during that time of his "hidden life" of unconscious preparation for the tiara, and teaches us the school in which his grand character and lofty genius were formed and mellowed. Whilst delineating the humility which those aspiring to perfection should aim at, it in reality presents us with a beautiful portrait of the Holy Father himself, and brings us in touch with his very spirit. For to use the words which S. Gregory the Great wrote of S. Benedict: "So holy a man could by no means teach otherwise than as he lived" — Sandus vir nulio modo potuii aliter docere quam vixit.•
Those who have been compelled by duty to renounce the gratification of a pilgrimage to the Eternal City for the Papal Jubilee and to remain at home — those thousands of loyal sons and daughters of holy Mother Church scattered up and down the United Kingdom, in town and hamlet, in the noble house and the humble cottage — one and all, in reading this little work, will acquire a more familiar and intimate acquaintance with the Supreme Pastor of their souls than they could possibly enjoy by merely gazing upon his face and hearing his voice. By it the reader will be drawn under the spell and fascination of his vigorous intellect and striking eloquence, and led to exclaim ; —
"Are not his words as a fire and as a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces ?"
Though dedicated to his Seminarists, the book will be found very suitable to all classes and conditions of men. Is there not reason to think it will even be so cherished by the faithful as to rank with the "Imitation" and the "Spiritual Combat?" So true to life are its admonitions, so profound and searching its lessons, that throughout the Holy Father seems to speak as the spiritual director of every individual soul, as the physician of each human heart, and as the Good Shepherd seeking out the lost sheep. That one so well versed in the secrets of the interior life, and so fully acquainted with the sufferings of poor humanity, should place his finger upon "the Practice of Humility" as the crying want of the age, and as the most necessary exercise towards the formation of an ascetic priesthood, is not unnatural. For as our blessed Lord by His cross and by His humility drew all men unto Himself, so by the use of these same potent means will His Vicegerents upon earth ever continue to fulfil their glorious and divine mission in the world.
To those outside the fold, who, recognising the versatility and grasp of his master iriind, have been hitherto accustomed to regard him merely as the finished scholar, and the acute philosopher, the great statesman and the arbiter of the nations, this book will reveal the secret which raised him to his present matchless glory — and withal that sustains him in it.
No thoughtful Christian will doubt that the true and supernatural explanation of all those achievements and triumphs may be traced to his humility of spirit. In fact, the Sovereign Pontiff pointed out this truth himself in those memorable, and, as it were, prophetic words spoken in reply to the address of the Sacred College on the day of his coronation, March 3rd, 1878: — "Convinced that the most merciful God is He Who chooses the weak things of this world to confound the strong, We live in the certainty that He will sustain Our weakness, and raise up Our lowliness in order to show forth His power and make His strength to shine."
In conclusion. His Holiness has embellished this treatise with a rich appendix of various thoughts culled from spiritual writers, and preceded by the sermon of the great Bishop of Hippo upon the "Fear of God and True Humility." On confronting in their originals S. Benedict's immortal chapter on Humility with the discourse of S. Augustine, it is quite perceptible that this must have been a source from which the Monastic Legislator drew his inspirations, using as he does in one place its very words and expressions. It may be interesting to know that fourteen hundred years later, another Light and Law-giver of the Church repaired to the same fountain. For at the audience in which the Pope graciously accorded permission for the present translation, he condescended to enter upon the motives which led him to compose this valuable treatise, avowing that it was this very sermon of S. Augustine which had inspired him with its first conception.
Joseph Jerome Vaughan, O.S.B.
Monte Cassino,
Whitsuntide, 1888
• Dialog, lib. ii. cap. xxxvi.

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